Edmonds Fountain

 

6/23/26 Edmonds Town Center
(I turned in this sketch right after the outing, so I didn't get a chance to scan it; this is just a photo I snapped on location)

As a celebration of Sketcher Fest, ArtSpot art supply shop invited their instructors and others in the Edmonds and Seattle sketching community to participate in a themed window exhibit. After gathering on Tuesday to sketch the Edmonds Town Center fountain, we all contributed our sketches for display in the shop’s window for the month of July. What a fun way to highlight urban sketching with a single theme!

Anticipating the afternoon’s high heat, I arrived earlier than the noon meetup time to make my first sketch (top of post). A relief for us sketchers, Edmonds was 10 degrees cooler than Seattle, making it comfortable and very pleasant in the shade.

The yellow sketch was intended for the window show, but I wanted a sketch of the fountain for my journal, too. While taking a lunch break at Seafood Market, where I grabbed a great sidewalk table, I could still see the fountain down the block – score!

Seafood Market

Back at the fountain after lunch, I spotted Tracy, her dog Bodie, and Jim. After chatting with them a bit, I walked across the street to capture them and the fountain for a third time.

Material notes: I’ve sketched the Edmonds fountain several times before, and it’s always challenging. The issue is that the metal structure is about the same value as its surroundings of buildings and trees, so it’s difficult to make it stand out. And of course, falling water is always a challenge of its own. For the window display, I wanted to use paper larger than my usual comfy A5. On a whim, I grabbed my 9-by-12-inch UglyPads. The size was a stretch for me, and I had also never used only Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons on Uglybooks paper, so it was a bit of a gamble. I kept the washes light and spare, and the paper held up like a champ!

Untested, the Neo II and UglyPads combo went well! Whew!

I had several other color options in my UglyPads, and a darker color might have made the fountain pop more, but I thought sunny yellow captured the mood of a summer celebration better.

For the white, I used a non-soluble Neocolor I wax pastel. I could have just as easily used a white Neo II, which looks the same in its dry state, but I hardly use my small set of Neo I crayons, so it was a way to use one. The fountain still doesn’t stand out against its background as much as I’d like, but overall, it came out well – considering the chances I took! I was pleased by how easy the chunky Neo II crayons were to use with 9-by-12 paper. I’d be hard-pressed to make a sketch that large on location using colored pencils, but the crayons were a good scale match with the size.

I’m relieved – I didn’t even bring a backup plan!

Product Review: Hashi Pastel Holder

 

Some of my many Neocolor II stubs. 

Last week, I complained that I keep breaking my Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons. At home, I can use a stub as is until it’s too short to hold comfortably. In the field, though, the problem is worse: Stubs fall to the bottom of my crayon holder and become irretrievable or forgotten.

I started looking around for an extender that would make it possible to use broken crayons on location. Not many will accommodate 9mm crayons. The best is probably the Caran d’Ache Fixpencil Pastel Holder, which is intended for use with Cd’A’s own Neocolor I, Neocolor II and Neoart pastels. But at more than $36, it seemed like a typically overpriced (and overbuilt) Caran d’Ache product. If it’s like the lead holders that came with the Museum Aquarelle lead set, the pastel holder will be well made but built like a tank – and too heavy to use comfortably.

I eventually found Hashi Pastel Holders, which came in a two-pack. At less than four bucks each, the price was right, but the design was unexpected. Intended for use with traditional soft oil pastels, they have the benefit of accommodating varying sizes of pastels by opening like a clamp. Skeptical, I wondered if the jaws would slip on wax pastels, which are harder than soft oil pastels, but they don’t seem to.

Hashi Pastel Holders

A straightforward but unexpected design: Pinching the end at left opens the jaws, where the stub is inserted.

One of my favorite greens back in service!

The holders are made of lightweight plastic, which is exactly what I want. The downside is that they are bulky, and my tiny, slim (actually, a bit chunky lately), everyday-carry bag has no millimeter of space to spare. Inserting a small stub of a favorite green that had broken in two places, I crammed one into my overstuffed bag anyway (time for a much-needed diet, I’m afraid).

I took it out for its first outing last Sunday to Bothell Landing. So far, it’s doing its job, taking even the shortest of Neocolor II stubs without slipping.

Speaking of my Neocolor IIs, here’s an update for those who may have been experiencing sympathetic anxiety on my behalf: I found my Cobalt Blue! As reported a couple of weeks ago, I discovered that Cobalt Blue and Emerald Green were missing from their usual storage container. Cobalt turned up in my life-drawing bag when I went to drink & draw at Gage Academy last week. I had forgotten that I kept a few Neocolors in that bag. Unfortunately, Emerald Green wasn’t among them and is still at large.

Summer Solstice at the Sammamish River

 

6/21/26 Sammamish River from the Park at Bothell Landing

Last fall when USk Seattle met at the Park at Bothell Landing, it was my first visit, so I wanted to take a wide survey of the location. Making a page spread of small tonal vignettes around the park was a good way to get a feel for the place.

Here's my vignette sketch from last September, which served as a memory thumbnail.

I’d been wanting to go back to sketch the Sammamish River in color. On the first day of summer, I met Ching and Natalie there, and we were treated to another beautiful morning. I didn’t refer to my September sketch before I went, but I clearly remembered the view from the boat launch area – the curve in the river, the trees on both banks, more trees in the distance. It was a fun challenge to interpret the scene in color this time. I was hoping someone would put a boat in the water so I’d have something for the foreground. Lacking that, I used my Green Lake standby: Some branches from shoreline plantings.

Delicious Weather at Thornton Creek

 

6/19/26 Thornton Creek

Sculpture at Thornton Place

We had some utterly delicious weather last week! Temps in the high-60s to mid-70s and sunshine – the kind of weather that makes me so happy and thankful that I live here!

Nilda and I chose one of those ideal days to sketch at Thornton Creek, which was new to her. Although the walking path is mostly sunny in the morning, trees provide pockets of deep shade. If I sketch there often enough, I’m going to run out of those handy spots, but so far I keep finding new views, like this one.

Up on the street level where I was waiting for Nilda, I finally got around to sketching a “leg” of some public art I see whenever I’m near Northgate. Three of these metal sculptures stick out of the ground, and I always think they look like octopus legs (or maybe a Dr. Seuss-inspired animal).

One more reason why I live here.

St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church

 

6/20/26 St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, Capitol Hill neighborhood

The only other onion-domed church I’ve sketched in Seattle (and perhaps the only other one in the city) is St. Spiridon Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Now I can add St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church to my short list. Smaller and with fewer onions, St. Nicholas on Capitol Hill was undergoing restoration when USk Seattle met there. The front (top of post), where most of the sketchers gathered, was still showing signs of age and weathering.

After I finished sketching the front, I walked around to the back, which looked noticeably cleaner (at left). Beyond one of the onions, I saw a couple of downtown buildings down the hill.

As often happens, I had a few minutes to fill before the throwdown, so I walked a few blocks to Pine Street. Capitol Hill’s iconic utility towers marked the “top” of the neighborhood, and I had more wires to joyfully sketch.

The Capitol Hill utility towers from Pine Street

Drag Drink & Draw

 

6/19/26 Sharkie, 20-min. pose

Gage Academy offers occasional evening drink & draw events with models. For Pride month, two costumed drag models would be featured with rainbow-colored lights and backdrop. Who could resist that? Kim, Ching and I knew we couldn’t!

Sharkie, 10-min. pose

As promised, models Sharkie and Indigo gave us dynamic poses in fun costumes (look at Indigo’s boots!). It had been months since I last went to life drawing, so it took me the entire 90-minute session to feel like I was just beginning to warm up, but it was a ton of fun anyway. We’ll be back for more!

Rusty short poses!

Kim, Ching and me after a fun evening!

26 Wires

 

6/17/26 Maple Leaf neighborhood

A woman came out of the house next to where I was standing. After admiring my sketch in progress, she looked up at the scene I was sketching.

“Don’t put in all those ugly wires!” she warned me sternly. “I counted – there are 26 wires at this intersection!”

You can see how far that suggestion went. 😉

Technical notes: I’m pretty pleased with my proactive thinking and planning (a rare occurrence) on this one. Almost always, I paint the sky after I’ve drawn all the trees and other elements against the sky, which requires fussy cutting around those elements with the paint. I do this because: 1. I usually don’t remember to paint the sky first. 2. When I do (rarely) remember, I have to wait for the sky to dry completely before I can draw over it, which annoys me.

This time, I had drawn all the trees first as usual. Then I used a dark purple non-soluble Derwent Drawing pencil to draw the fence and street shadows. It occurred to me that I could draw the utility poles and all those wires first – before the sky. Then I painted right over the non-soluble lines. No smearing and no waiting for the sky to dry! That sequence was an ideal use of mixed media for strategic purposes.